


and now how abhorred in my imagination it is!

by TrebleTwenty



Category: Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Earthrise Spoilers, Gen, He feels bad about the war crimes guys, Introspection, Multi, the collextive, the polycule are fiiiiiighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28539252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrebleTwenty/pseuds/TrebleTwenty
Summary: The commander of the Decepticons cannot permit himself to regret.
Relationships: Elita One/Megatron/Optimus Prime/Ultra Magnus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Collextive





	and now how abhorred in my imagination it is!

**Author's Note:**

> me and niko and eve went insane when we watched earthrise and the obvious broken polycule that lay at the heart of it all... and then kasey called them the collextive and we were done for
> 
> title from the 'alas, poor yorick' monologue. alas poor magnus!!

He did envy Shockwave sometimes. To be able to take pleasure in what was necessary, to really  _ enjoy  _ what they did, seemed to him to be frightening and alluring in equal measure. On days like this, as the scientist looked ahead to what could be done with the energon they would drain from poor unfortunate outposts like Sector 12 and Megatron himself sat on his throne feeling sick and hollowed out inside, he fairly burned with it.

Sometimes he toyed with asking Shockwave to do it to him, too; whatever half-baked lobotomy he’d performed on himself all those years ago that had left him free of his compassion. It seemed to him to be a finer existence than any of the rest of them left on their broken, dying world were living, but something held him back. 

“It’s this wretched spark of mine,” he admitted, quietly. It just  _ sat _ there, pulsing quietly at the core of him and making him ache as he did what had to be done, made the decisions a  _ good  _ commander had to make, pragmatic decisions that weighed the good of the many against whatever or whoever was in front of him and  _ did what was right _ . It shouldn’t - nay, couldn’t - matter one jot to him what his spark thought of the matter when it concerned the survival of the very planet itself, but he could not seem to bring himself to be rid of it once and for all. No matter how it seemed to scream. 

What was a spark? What could a spark possibly be to a commander? What worth did the weight in his chest hold against the survival of a species? 

Those were the questions that Optimus Prime did not deign to ask himself, and that was why Megatron was going to  _ win. _

“But why does it hurt?”

He looked up at Magnus, then. 

Magnus had nothing to say, because Magnus was dead. Magnus was dead because Megatron had killed him, because Megatron’s cause had demanded that Megatron kill him in a cruel manner that he sometimes allowed himself to regret in the tiny part of himself he held shut away that he let feel luxurious, superfluous things like regret. Magnus was gone, and Megatron did not miss the days he used to use his spark for other things entirely.

“You’re dead,” he told Magnus. “Nothing you say matters anymore.”

Magnus didn’t reply, this optics grey and glassy.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he told Magnus, “what kind of silly little treaty you and Elita and Prime would have cooked up if I had said yes. It would have been ridiculous.” 

Orion had always been an idealist. Back when they had all been together he had been the dreamer, wanting nice things for everyone in a vague and aimless manner that was utterly useless when it came down to the real work of making those nice things happen. Ariel had been a mech of action just as he was, a quality he had treasured, and he imagined sometimes how she must chafe under Prime. Magnus had lived in the concrete, loving to learn and think and know and teach. He just hadn’t wanted to know him, in the end.

He laughed once; forced out, strained and bitter.

“I wouldn’t have been able to accept it, whatever it was,” he said to Magnus. “As if you three ever understood me enough to offer what  _ I  _ wanted.”

If they had understood him enough to offer him a treaty he could have accepted then he would still have been with them and none of this would have ever happened. Those sweet mechs, so eager and proud to meet their leader, would have been somewhere doing something fairly compensated but incredibly boring and he wouldn’t have had to-

Unconsciously, he clawed lightly at his chestplate over his spark, less than a millimeter away from digging his fingertips in.

What was his spark for now, anyway, even if he had once used it for something else entirely? Elita had always thought him sparkless to one extent or another. The cold, hard, pragmatic part of him that thrived on leadership and took a sick kind of pleasure in the choices he had to make would relish in telling Optimus what he had done, shutting off every avenue to them ever understanding each other again. 

But Magnus would have been disappointed.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he growled, and left the room.

**Author's Note:**

> god. i feel insane. im going to do more, too.


End file.
